Latin American Economy & Business - February 2017 (ISSN 1741-7430)

Mexico: Trump detonates North American car wars

As candidate, as president-elect, and now as president, Donald Trump has insisted that automobile industry jobs, allegedly snatched away by Mexico under the Nafta free trade agreement, must be brought back home to the US. A fusillade of tweets in January singled out big automotive companies and threatened them with punitive tariffs if they failed to bring jobs back north of the border. At least one, Ford, appeared ready to toe the new line, announcing the cancellation of a US$1.6bn plant planned for San Luis Potosí. Others wavered. Here, we look at some of the issues, and how things might play out for the auto sector for the rest of this year.